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| East/Subsaharan Africa |
| Calls for Nuba Mountains independence |
| 2002-08-25 |
| A leading southern Sudanese activist has called for independence for the Nuba Mountains region in southwestern Sudan, as part of a final negotiated peace deal expected to follow ongoing talks to end the country's long-standing conflict. Doesn't anybody want to be in Sudan? The Sudanese veteran politician and leader of the Free Sudanese National Party (FSNP), Father Philip Abbas Ghabbush said he would like to see the Nuba Mountains made independent under international trusteeship if the peace talks being held in Kenya failed to address the issue of the region. The negotiations are being conducted in the southwestern Kenyan town of Machakos. They are a follow-up to talks in July at which a landmark agreement was reached between the Khartoum government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) on the holding of a referendum in the south in six years' time to decide between unity and secession. Kind of a six-year ceasefire... However, the issue of the Nuba Mountains did not feature in the July talks, according to Ghabbush. "We will ask for making the Nuba Mountains an independent entity, under the responsibility of the United Nations. It was not stated during the talks that the Nuba Mountains belong to the north or the south," he said. Khartoum has so far insisted that southern Sudan is defined by boundaries set at independence from Anglo-Egyptian rule in 1956. These exclude Nuba Mountains, southern Blue Nile and other disputed and marginalised regions, whose inhabitants, the SPLM/A argues, identify with the southern struggle, although not physically in the south. They're sticking to the letter of the document in this case because it's to their advantage. Are the Nubians going to get their way? Probably not. Sounds like a lost cause to me. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |